Leveraging and managing assessment environments in an assessment hub

ABSTRACT

Disclosed are some implementations of systems, apparatus, methods and computer program products for facilitating the management of assessment environments in an eLearning environment. A user may switch between assessment environments by selecting from a menu of selectable assessment environments. Educational content may be presented within a context of a selected assessment environment and assessment tasks may be completed within the context of the selected assessment environment.

PRIORITY DATA

This patent document claims priority to commonly assigned U.S.Provisional Patent Application No. 62/402,138, titled “Leveraging andManaging Assessment Environments in an Assessment Hub,” by Ready et al.,filed on Sep. 30, 2016, which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety and for all purposes.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material,which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentor the patent disclosure as it appears in the United States Patent andTrademark Office patent file or records but otherwise reserves allcopyright rights whatsoever.

BACKGROUND

“Cloud computing” services provide shared network-based resources,applications, and information to computers and other devices uponrequest. In cloud computing environments, services can be provided byservers to users' computer systems via the Internet and wirelessnetworks rather than installing software locally on users' computersystems. A user can interact with social networking systems, emailsystems, and instant messaging systems, by way of example, in a cloudcomputing environment.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve only toprovide examples of possible structures and operations for the disclosedsystems, apparatus, methods and computer program products for leveragingand managing assessment environments in an assessment hub. Thesedrawings in no way limit any changes in form and detail that may be madeby one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope ofthe disclosed implementations.

FIG. 1 shows a system diagram of an example of a database system 100 forassessment environment management in an eLearning environment, inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2A shows an example of a user interface 200 a in the form of agraphical user interface (GUI) as displayed on a computing devicepresenting educational content, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2B shows an example of an updated user interface 200 b in the formof a GUI as displayed on a computing device presenting educationalcontent, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 3 shows a graphical user interface (GUI) 300 presenting componentsfor accessing eLearning content within the context of an assessmentenvironment, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a GUI 400 presenting components for managingassessment environments, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a GUI 500 presenting components for switchingbetween assessment environments, in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 6 shows an example of a GUI 600 presenting components forautomatically generating assessment environments, in accordance withsome implementations.

FIG. 7A shows an example of a method 700 for saving an assessmentenvironment, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 7B shows an example of a method 720 for implementing an assessmentenvironment switcher, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 7C shows an example of a method 740 for generating assessmentenvironments, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 8A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service can be used in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 8B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 8A and various possible interconnections between theseelements.

FIG. 9A shows a system diagram of an example of architectural componentsof an on-demand database service environment 900, in accordance withsome implementations.

FIG. 9B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand database service environment,in accordance with some implementations.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Examples of systems, apparatus, methods and computer program productsaccording to the disclosed implementations are described in thissection. These examples are being provided solely to add context and aidin the understanding of the disclosed implementations. It will thus beapparent to one skilled in the art that implementations may be practicedwithout some or all of these specific details. In other instances,certain operations have not been described in detail to avoidunnecessarily obscuring implementations. Other applications arepossible, such that the following examples should not be taken asdefinitive or limiting either in scope or setting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to theaccompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in whichare shown, by way of illustration, specific implementations. Althoughthese implementations are described in sufficient detail to enable oneskilled in the art to practice the disclosed implementations, it isunderstood that these examples are not limiting, such that otherimplementations may be used and changes may be made without departingfrom their spirit and scope. For example, the operations of methodsshown and described herein are not necessarily performed in the orderindicated. It should also be understood that the methods may includemore or fewer operations than are indicated. In some implementations,operations described herein as separate operations may be combined.Conversely, what may be described herein as a single operation may beimplemented in multiple operations.

Some implementations of the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods andcomputer program products are configured for leveraging and managingassessment environments in an assessment hub. In some implementations,techniques are disclosed for validating hands-on assessments via amodular and extensible Application Programming Interface (API)assessment hub, an organization management interface, and a switcher fornavigating among disparate environments in which a user can work.

In some implementations, an extensible service is provided to connect toexternal platforms via the API to assess an action in environments ofthe external platforms, and to facilitate an end user navigating amongdifferent environments while tracking all progress of the user in any ofthe environments to a single eLearning account.

In some implementations, an API assessment hub provides a modular testharness to use various APIs to validate hands-on assessments in aneLearning context. The API assessment hub has an architecture thatenables customers, partners, and internal employees of an organizationto build extensions to use the harness against any endpoint at anydomain in the cloud. The API assessment hub can facilitate connectionsfor different types of assessments such as programmatic/technical,simulations, fill in the blank, peer review, mix and match, etc. The APIassessment hub can provide an extensible service to connect to otherplatforms via the API in order assess an action in the environments ofthe other platforms. The API assessment hub can also be configured tovalidate hands-on work completed via various APIs to assess skillscompetencies.

In some implementations, an organization (Org) management unit providesan architecture to facilitate association of different developmentenvironment identities with an end user. The Org management unit canprovide both an identity to log onto the platform with and a mechanismfor authorizing use for directly logging into and checking against theOrg for hands-on assessments. By storing a refresh token for the Org,the user can be automatically authenticated into the Org through adeclarative dropdown interface, by way of illustration. Once authorized,an access token may be obtained, and progress can be continuallyvalidated using the API assessment hub. A user can leverage his or herdevelopment environments to assess skills learned via an eLearningplatform.

In some implementations, with a declarative org switcher interface, anend user can switch between development environments to build solutionsfor challenges/assessments in completely different environments andvalidate against those identities. Completion activity can be trackedusing the same primary eLearning user account.

In some implementations, an Org switcher provides an interface forselecting an environment to complete hands-on assessments in andvalidate against using the API assessment hub. The Org switcher canprovide a declarative dropdown interface for: switching to and launchingany of a user's development environments, signing into anotherdevelopment environment and saving the environment for later access, anddeclaratively spinning up a new environment, which can be automaticallysaved to an environments table. The Org switcher can provide a defaultfunctionality to launch the last environment used when a “Launch” buttonis pressed.

By way of illustration, John is an employee at an organization, PyramidConstruction, Inc. John accesses an eLearning platform, which enablesemployees of the organization to complete learning assessment taskswithin the context of their organization. An assessment environmentcorresponding to the organization has an associated database thatreflects the data records that an employee of the organization wouldtypically encounter during their day-to-day tasks. John logs in to theassessment environment, and John's credentials are saved in associationwith the assessment environment. As John completes various learningassessment tasks, his knowledge is assessed based upon the accuracy withwhich the tasks are completed.

To perform learning assessment tasks, a user must typically log in to anassessment environment using his or her credentials. If the user wishesto switch to a different assessment environment, the user must typicallylog out of the previous assessment environment and log in to the desiredassessment environment. Moreover, if a user wishes to generate a newassessment environment, he or she must typically submit all informationthat will be used to generate the new assessment environment. Therefore,while an eLearning system can be a valuable resource, management ofassessment environments that are used to facilitate eLearning can betime-consuming and tedious.

In accordance with various implementations, assessment environments areuser-selectable from a menu of options. John declaratively selects anassessment environment from the menu. Since the system has previouslyauthenticated John in association with the assessment environment, thesystem automatically logs John in to the selected assessmentenvironment. John then proceeds with completing eLearning tasks that arepresented to him within the context of the selected assessmentenvironment. In addition, John may request that the system automaticallygenerate a new assessment environment that is subsequently added to themenu of options. John switches between assessment environments withoutre-submitting his credentials, enabling him to complete eLearningassessment tasks in an efficient manner.

FIG. 1 shows a system diagram of an example of a database system 100 forassessment environment management in an eLearning environment, inaccordance with some implementations. Database system 100 includes avariety of different hardware and/or software components that are incommunication with each other. In the non-limiting example of FIG. 1,database system 100 includes at least one content service database 116,at least one assessment environment management API 120, and anenterprise learning platform 124. In accordance with variousimplementations, users may access enterprise learning platform 124 tolearn about a corresponding web site and its associated services. Moreparticularly, users may access enterprise learning platform 124 toperform hands-on assessment tasks within the context of an organizationwith which they are familiar. Assessment tasks may include, for example,writing a segment of computer code, modifying data within a data record,or generating a new data record. An assessment environment correspondingto the organization may have an associated database that replicates datamaintained by the organization, as well as the hierarchical structure ofthe data maintained by the organization. For example, data associatedwith an insurance company may include customer data, account data, andinsurance plan data.

In the following description, assessment tasks may also be referred toas challenges. In some implementations, the assessment tasks arepresented in the form of learning paths within the context of a game.Learning paths may be organized in chronological order in which they areto be completed by users. Upon successful completion of an assessmenttask, the user may be presented a corresponding message via a display oftheir device. In addition, the user may be awarded points that signifythe successful completion of the corresponding learning path.

Users 102 can include different users corresponding to a variety ofroles and/or permissions. Examples of users include business users,technical users, content generator users, and learning users. In someimplementations, release management can include releasing neweducational content to enterprise learning platform 124. Examples ofdevices used by users include, but are not limited to a desktop computeror portable electronic device such as a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop,a wearable device such as Google Glass®, another optical head-mounteddisplay (OHMD) device, a smart watch, etc.

Communication among components of database system 100 may be facilitatedthrough a combination of networks and interfaces. Database system 100may handle and process data requests from users 102 of database system100. For example, content validators and release managers can makechanges to one or more release objects and have those changes stored incontent database 116 or a separate production database. In someimplementations, release objects allow users to modify educationalcontent, add educational content, edit and/or update educationalcontent, update the version of a release object, and preview educationalcontent.

In other implementations, global namespacing is provided for granularsecurity of educational content. An authorization service may be used todetermine who can build, preview, or publish content. Multiple modes ofaccess to production content can exist, which can be based on privateauthorization or public authorization. In still other implementations, asecure image service can be used to protect intellectual property, e.g.,images and other media. Also or alternatively, a caching layer can beused for quick access to content, and APIs 120 can be used to releasecontent systematically. In some implementations, access to APIs 120 canbe restricted to an appropriate set of users. Similarly, the ability togenerate or update release objects using APIs 120 can be restricted.

In some implementations, a user of enterprise learning platform 124 mayhave a single authorization identity. In other implementations, a userof enterprise learning platform 124 may have two or more differentauthorization identities. This can allow multiple modes of access toeducational content, which can be based on private authorization orpublic authorization. For example, one authorization identity can be aset of access credentials based on a profile of a customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) computing platform. The other authorization identitycan be a set of access credentials associated with enterprise learningplatform 124. In some implementations, enterprise learning platform 124can query the set of access credentials from the CRM computing platformand map those credentials and/or permissions with credentials associatedwith enterprise learning platform 124.

FIG. 2A shows an example of a user interface 200 a in the form of agraphical user interface GUI as displayed on a computing devicepresenting educational content, in accordance with some implementations.User interface 200 a shows educational content objects 204 a-204 f priorto a new release object being processed. FIG. 2B shows an example of anupdated user interface 200 b in the form of a GUI as displayed on acomputing device presenting educational content, in accordance with someimplementations. User interface 200 b shows content objects 204 a-204 fafter a new release object has been processed. In this example, a userhas provided a new content object 208, e.g., “New Trail.” After therelease object, including New Trail is generated, the user interface 200b of the user device may display a hyperlink to a preview presentationincluding content objects 204 a-204 f as well as new content object 208.To access an eLearning content module, the user may select one of thecontent objects 204 a-204 f from within the user interface.

FIG. 3 shows a graphical user interface (GUI) 300 presenting componentsfor accessing eLearning content within the context of an assessmentenvironment, in accordance with some implementations. To initiate aneLearning process, a user may select an assessment environment from amenu of selectable options. In this example, the user has selected theTrailhead Edition 302. The user is then presented various assessmenttasks. After the user completes a particular assessment task within thecontext of the selected assessment environment, the user may click onthe “Check Challenge” interface object 304 of the GUI. The system maythen verify whether the assessment task was successfully completed. Forexample, where the assessment task resulted in the modification ofdatabase records, the system may verify that data and/or metadataassociated with the database records has been updated correctly inaccordance with the completed assessment task. The result of validationof the assessment task may be presented to the user, who may continuecompleting further assessment tasks.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a GUI 400 presenting components for managingassessment environments, in accordance with some implementations. Asshown in this example, a user may manage their different user accountsusing an assessment environment manager. For each assessmentenvironment, the user may identify a corresponding user account (e.g.username) 402. A user may wish to have a single user account (e.g.,username) associated with multiple assessment environments.Alternatively, a user may wish to use two or more user accounts inassociation with various assessment environments. In this example, theuser has associated a first user account 404 with two differentassessment environments, and a second user account 406 with a thirdassessment environment. Each assessment environment may have anassociated label 408, which the user may update as desired. In someimplementations, each assessment environment has an associated type 410.Each type 410 may have associated characteristics that enable the userto complete various different types of assessment tasks or accessdifferent types of data.

It is often desirable for a user to work in different assessmentenvironments. For example, a user may fulfill multiple roles within acompany, and may therefore wish to access different assessmentenvironments for these different roles. By maintaining separateassessment environments, the user may ensure that data and metadata ofone assessment environment does not conflict with the data and metadataof another assessment environment.

In accordance with various implementations, a user may declarativelyswitch between assessment environments. This may be accomplished withoutrequiring the user to submit information pertaining to the assessmentenvironments or associated credentials (e.g., passwords). Moreparticularly, a user need not explicitly log out of an assessmentenvironment that they wish to exit. Similarly, a user need notexplicitly log in or submit credentials to switch to a differentassessment environment. Since the user need not explicitly log in or outof assessment environments, the user may quickly switch contexts whileaccessing the eLearning platform.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a GUI 500 presenting components for switchingbetween assessment environments, in accordance with someimplementations. As shown in this example, a list of user-selectableassessment environments may be presented to a user via a drop-downinterface, menu, or other user interface. To launch one of theassessment environments, the user may select the desired assessmentenvironment by moving their cursor to the desired assessment environmentand clicking on the selected assessment environment. In this example,the user has selected “Workflow Org,” as shown at 502. In this manner,the user may declaratively switch between different assessmentenvironments. The user may launch the selected assessment environment byclicking on a button 504 or other user interface object.

The system launches the selected assessment environment withoutrequiring the user to submit their credentials, such as a username orpassword. Rather, the system may automatically retrieve the user'scredentials and log the user in to the selected assessment environment.For example, the system may log the user in to a particular UniformResource Locator (URL) associated with the selected assessmentenvironment. After the system has logged the user in to the selectedassessment environment, the user may complete assessment tasks withinthe context of the selected assessment environment.

In some instances, a user may wish to create their own assessmentenvironment. More particularly, the user may specify or select a URLthat they wish to associate with a particular assessment environment. Inthese instances, the user may log in to the assessment environment usingtheir credentials at 506 and save the assessment environment forsubsequent selection. The system may automatically save the user'scredentials in association with the assessment environment forsubsequent retrieval.

In accordance with various implementations, the user may request that anew assessment environment be system-generated. In this example, theuser may select a “Create a Trailhead Playground” option 508 from a menuto initiate automated assessment environment generation. The system maygenerate a new assessment environment, which may subsequently beselected by the user for subsequent assessment tasks. Automatedassessment environment generation will be described in further detailbelow with reference to FIG. 6.

In some implementations, the user may access the assessment environmentmanager by selecting a corresponding user interface object. In thisexample, the user has selected “Manage my hands-on orgs,” as shown at510. The user may then be presented a GUI such as that shown in FIG. 4,enabling the user to manage all of their assessment environments from asingle user interface.

FIG. 6 shows an example of a GUI 600 presenting components forautomatically generating assessment environments, in accordance withsome implementations. Automated generation of an assessment environmentmay be initiated via a selection of the user of a menu option such as“Create a Trailhead Playground” option 508. After automated generationof an assessment environment is initiated, the system may present avisual indication that the assessment environment is being generated, asrequested. In this example, an icon 602 signifies the spin out of thenew assessment environment by the system.

The generation of the assessment environment may be performedautomatically by the system. This is accomplished without requiring theuser to submit information pertaining to the desired assessmentenvironment. More particularly, the user need not specify a URL for theassessment environment. In addition, the user need not submit a usernameor password. Instead, the system may randomly generate a URL that itassociates with the new assessment environment. The system may alsoautomatically generate a username and password that the system will useto log the user in to the assessment environment upon selection of theassessment environment by the user. Generation of the URL, username,and/or password may be accomplished via a random name generator.

FIG. 7A shows an example of a method 700 for saving an assessmentenvironment, in accordance with some implementations. An assessmentenvironment may be saved automatically. For example, an assessmentenvironment may be saved to a user's account at the time that the userlogs in to the assessment environment. Alternatively, an assessmentenvironment may be added to the user's account in response to a userrequest. For example, an assessment environment may be added to theuser's account from a web page presented via an assessment environmentmanager.

A user may submit their login credentials at 702 in association with theassessment environment. For example, the user may submit the logincredentials in association with a URL corresponding to the assessmentenvironment. The system may then store the login credentials inassociation with the assessment environment at 704. Login credentialsmay include a username and password. In some implementations,credentials may include a refresh token that is unique to the assessmentenvironment. In addition, the set of user-selectable assessmentenvironments associated with the user account is updated to include theparticular environment at 706. After the assessment environment has beenadded to their account, the user may declaratively switch to thatassessment environment at a later time.

In accordance with some implementations, when the user declarativelyswitches to the assessment environment, the system retrieves a refreshtoken associated with the assessment environment. The refresh token maythen be used to request an access token for accessing the assessmentenvironment. In this manner, the system may automatically log the userin to the selected assessment environment.

In accordance with various implementations, an assessment environmentswitcher enables a user to declaratively switch between previouslyauthenticated environments. FIG. 7B shows an example of a method 720 forimplementing an assessment environment switcher, in accordance with someimplementations. To facilitate the switching between assessmentenvironments, the system provides a user interface that enables a userto declaratively switch between assessment environments. In someimplementations, the system displays, in a user interface on a displayof a user device, a menu indicating a set of user-selectableenvironments at 722. Each of the environments may be associated with acorresponding Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and a correspondingdatabase. In addition, each of the environments may be associated with aset of credentials of a user that has the authority to access thecorresponding environment. For example, the credentials may include ausername and password.

To switch between assessment environments, the user submits first userinput selecting one of the environments. For example, the user maydeclaratively switch to an environment by simply pointing and clickingon a selected environment within a menu of selectable environments. Thesystem processes the first user input submitted at the user device at724. For example, where the user selects a particular assessmentenvironment, the system may identify the selected assessment environmentwithin a database or table of selectable assessment environments.

The system may retrieve the credentials associated the selectedenvironment at 726. For example, the system may retrieve the usernameand password associated with the selected environment. In someimplementations, the credentials include a refresh token that isassociated with the environment.

The system may then launch the selected environment at 728 using thecorresponding URL and credentials. For example, the system mayautomatically log the user in to the URL on the user's behalf using theuser's credentials without requiring the user to submit theircredentials.

The system may provide educational content within a context of theselected environment such that a challenge task is presented at 730. Thesystem processes second user input submitted at the user device inrelation to the challenge task at 732. In response to processing thesecond user input, the system may update the database corresponding tothe selected one of the environments at 734. For example, completion ofthe challenge task may result in the updating of a record of thedatabase.

The system may determine whether the second user input satisfies thechallenge task based, at least in part, on data and metadata stored inthe database corresponding to the selected environment at 736. Forexample, the system may determine whether the updates to the databaseare accurate in light of the challenge task that was recently completed.The system may then display, on the display of the user device, anindication of whether the second user input satisfies the challenge taskat 738

If the user chooses to select a different environment, the system mayautomatically log the user out of the previously selected environmentand launch the newly selected environment using the corresponding URLand credentials. Since the user need not submit their credentials eachtime they switch to a different assessment environment, the user mayeasily switch between assessment environments to complete challengetasks presented by the eLearning platform.

In accordance with various implementations, the system may “spin-out” orgenerate new assessment environments with minimal user input. Byautomatically spinning-out a new assessment environment, this eliminatesthe need for users to complete the lengthy and laborious process that istypically required to create a new assessment environment.

FIG. 7C shows an example of a method 740 for generating assessmentenvironments, in accordance with some implementations. A user may submita request to generate an assessment environment at 742. For example, theuser may select a “Create a Trailhead Playground” option from a menu. Inresponse, the system may generate a new assessment environment withoutrequesting further information such as a URL or credentials from theuser. Thus, the time-consuming process of setting up an assessmentenvironment that the user must typically complete has been offloaded tothe system.

The system generates a new assessment environment at 744. Moreparticularly, the system may generate a URL and associate the URL withthe new assessment environment. In addition, the system may generate oridentify a database and associate the database with the assessmentenvironment. In accordance with some implementations, the URL and/ordatabase may be generated through the use of a random name generator.

Since the user may modify objects within the database during theeLearning process, it is important that the user does not modify datathat may be accessed by other users in the organization. Thus, thesystem may replicate objects stored in an organizational databaseassociated with an organization in the database associated with theassessment environment.

In accordance with various implementations, the system may generatecredentials at 746 that it will associate with the assessmentenvironment. For example, the credentials may include a username andpassword. The credentials may be randomly generated, as describedherein. In other implementations, the system may reuse credentials ofthe user account that are associated with a different assessmentenvironment.

The system may store the login credentials in association with the newassessment environment at 748. In addition, the set of user-selectableenvironments associated with the user account may be updated to includethe newly generated assessment environment. The user may thereafterdeclaratively switch to or from the assessment environment withoutcompleting an explicit login or logout process. Since the user need notsubmit credentials or other information, the user may quickly switchbetween environments with minimal effort.

Some but not all of the techniques described or referenced herein areimplemented using or in conjunction with a social networking system.Social networking systems have become a popular way to facilitatecommunication among people, any of whom can be recognized as users of asocial networking system. One example of a social networking system isChatter®, provided by salesforce.com, inc. of San Francisco, Calif.salesforce.com, inc. is a provider of social networking services, CRMservices and other database management services, any of which can beaccessed and used in conjunction with the techniques disclosed herein insome implementations. In some but not all implementations, these variousservices can be provided in a cloud computing environment, for example,in the context of a multi-tenant database system. Thus, the disclosedtechniques can be implemented without having to install softwarelocally, that is, on computing devices of users interacting withservices available through the cloud. While the disclosedimplementations are often described with reference to Chatter®, thoseskilled in the art should understand that the disclosed techniques areneither limited to Chatter® nor to any other services and systemsprovided by salesforce.com, inc. and can be implemented in the contextof various other database systems and/or social networking systems suchas Facebook®, LinkedIn®, Twitter®, Google+®, Yammer® and Jive® by way ofexample only.

Some social networking systems can be implemented in various settings,including organizations. For instance, a social networking system can beimplemented to connect users within an enterprise such as a company orbusiness partnership, or a group of users within such an organization.For instance, Chatter® can be used by employee users in a division of abusiness organization to share data, communicate, and collaborate witheach other for various social purposes often involving the business ofthe organization. In the example of a multi-tenant database system, eachorganization or group within the organization can be a respective tenantof the system, as described in greater detail below.

In some social networking systems, users can access one or more socialnetwork feeds, which include information updates presented as items orentries in the feed. Such a feed item can include a single informationupdate or a collection of individual information updates. A feed itemcan include various types of data including character-based data, audiodata, image data and/or video data. A social network feed can bedisplayed in a graphical user interface (GUI) on a display device suchas the display of a computing device as described below. The informationupdates can include various social network data from various sources andcan be stored in a database system. In some but not all implementations,the disclosed methods, apparatus, systems, and computer program productsmay be configured or designed for use in a multi-tenant databaseenvironment.

In some implementations, a social networking system may allow a user tofollow data objects in the form of CRM records such as cases, accounts,or opportunities, in addition to following individual users and groupsof users. The “following” of a record stored in a database, as describedin greater detail below, allows a user to track the progress of thatrecord when the user is subscribed to the record. Updates to the record,also referred to herein as changes to the record, are one type ofinformation update that can occur and be noted on a social network feedsuch as a record feed or a news feed of a user subscribed to the record.Examples of record updates include field changes in the record, updatesto the status of a record, as well as the creation of the record itself.Some records are publicly accessible, such that any user can follow therecord, while other records are private, for which appropriate securityclearance/permissions are a prerequisite to a user following the record.

Information updates can include various types of updates, which may ormay not be linked with a particular record. For example, informationupdates can be social media messages submitted by a user or can beotherwise generated in response to user actions or in response toevents. Examples of social media messages include: posts, comments,indications of a user's personal preferences such as “likes” and“dislikes”, updates to a user's status, uploaded files, anduser-submitted hyperlinks to social network data or other network datasuch as various documents and/or web pages on the Internet. Posts caninclude alpha-numeric or other character-based user inputs such aswords, phrases, statements, questions, emotional expressions, and/orsymbols. Comments generally refer to responses to posts or to otherinformation updates, such as words, phrases, statements, answers,questions, and reactionary emotional expressions and/or symbols.Multimedia data can be included in, linked with, or attached to a postor comment. For example, a post can include textual statements incombination with a JPEG image or animated image. A like or dislike canbe submitted in response to a particular post or comment. Examples ofuploaded files include presentations, documents, multimedia files, andthe like.

Users can follow a record by subscribing to the record, as mentionedabove. Users can also follow other entities such as other types of dataobjects, other users, and groups of users. Feed tracked updatesregarding such entities are one type of information update that can bereceived and included in the user's news feed. Any number of users canfollow a particular entity and thus view information updates pertainingto that entity on the users' respective news feeds. In some socialnetworks, users may follow each other by establishing connections witheach other, sometimes referred to as “friending” one another. Byestablishing such a connection, one user may be able to see informationgenerated by, generated about, or otherwise associated with anotheruser. For instance, a first user may be able to see information postedby a second user to the second user's personal social network page. Oneimplementation of such a personal social network page is a user'sprofile page, for example, in the form of a web page representing theuser's profile. In one example, when the first user is following thesecond user, the first user's news feed can receive a post from thesecond user submitted to the second user's profile feed. A user'sprofile feed is also referred to herein as the user's “wall,” which isone example of a social network feed displayed on the user's profilepage.

In some implementations, a social network feed may be specific to agroup of users of a social networking system. For instance, a group ofusers may publish a feed. Members of the group may view and post to thisgroup feed in accordance with a permissions configuration for the feedand the group. Information updates in a group context can also includechanges to group status information.

In some implementations, when data such as posts or comments input fromone or more users are submitted to a social network feed for aparticular user, group, object, or other construct within a socialnetworking system, an email notification or other type of networkcommunication may be transmitted to all users following the user, group,or object in addition to the inclusion of the data as a feed item in oneor more feeds, such as a user's profile feed, a news feed, or a recordfeed. In some social networking systems, the occurrence of such anotification is limited to the first instance of a published input,which may form part of a larger conversation. For instance, anotification may be transmitted for an initial post, but not forcomments on the post. In some other implementations, a separatenotification is transmitted for each such information update.

The term “multi-tenant database system” generally refers to thosesystems in which various elements of hardware and/or software of adatabase system may be shared by one or more customers. For example, agiven application server may simultaneously process requests for a greatnumber of customers, and a given database table may store rows of datasuch as feed items for a potentially much greater number of customers.

An example of a “user profile” or “user's profile” is a database objector set of objects configured to store and maintain data about a givenuser of a social networking system and/or database system. The data caninclude general information, such as name, title, phone number, a photo,a biographical summary, and a status, e.g., text describing what theuser is currently doing. As mentioned below, the data can include socialmedia messages created by other users. Where there are multiple tenants,a user is typically associated with a particular tenant. For example, auser could be a salesperson of a company, which is a tenant of thedatabase system that provides a database service.

The term “record” generally refers to a data entity having fields withvalues and stored in database system. An example of a record is aninstance of a data object created by a user of the database service, forexample, in the form of a CRM record about a particular (actual orpotential) business relationship or project. The record can have a datastructure defined by the database service (a standard object) or definedby a user (custom object). For example, a record can be for a businesspartner or potential business partner (e.g., a client, vendor,distributor, etc.) of the user, and can include information describingan entire company, subsidiaries, or contacts at the company. As anotherexample, a record can be a project that the user is working on, such asan opportunity (e.g., a possible sale) with an existing partner, or aproject that the user is trying to get. In one implementation of amulti-tenant database system, each record for the tenants has a uniqueidentifier stored in a common table. A record has data fields that aredefined by the structure of the object (e.g., fields of certain datatypes and purposes). A record can also have custom fields defined by auser. A field can be another record or include links thereto, therebyproviding a parent-child relationship between the records.

The terms “social network feed” and “feed” are used interchangeablyherein and generally refer to a combination (e.g., a list) of feed itemsor entries with various types of information and data. Such feed itemscan be stored and maintained in one or more database tables, e.g., asrows in the table(s), that can be accessed to retrieve relevantinformation to be presented as part of a displayed feed. The term “feeditem” (or feed element) generally refers to an item of information,which can be presented in the feed such as a post submitted by a user.Feed items of information about a user can be presented in a user'sprofile feed of the database, while feed items of information about arecord can be presented in a record feed in the database, by way ofexample. A profile feed and a record feed are examples of differenttypes of social network feeds. A second user following a first user anda record can receive the feed items associated with the first user andthe record for display in the second user's news feed, which is anothertype of social network feed. In some implementations, the feed itemsfrom any number of followed users and records can be combined into asingle social network feed of a particular user.

As examples, a feed item can be a social media message, such as auser-generated post of text data, and a feed tracked update to a recordor profile, such as a change to a field of the record. Feed trackedupdates are described in greater detail below. A feed can be acombination of social media messages and feed tracked updates. Socialmedia messages include text created by a user, and may include otherdata as well. Examples of social media messages include posts, userstatus updates, and comments. Social media messages can be created for auser's profile or for a record. Posts can be created by various users,potentially any user, although some restrictions can be applied. As anexample, posts can be made to a wall section of a user's profile page(which can include a number of recent posts) or a section of a recordthat includes multiple posts. The posts can be organized inchronological order when displayed in a GUI, for instance, on the user'sprofile page, as part of the user's profile feed. In contrast to a post,a user status update changes a status of a user and can be made by thatuser or an administrator. A record can also have a status, the update ofwhich can be provided by an owner of the record or other users havingsuitable write access permissions to the record. The owner can be asingle user, multiple users, or a group.

In some implementations, a comment can be made on any feed item. In someimplementations, comments are organized as a list explicitly tied to aparticular feed tracked update, post, or status update. In someimplementations, comments may not be listed in the first layer (in ahierarchal sense) of feed items, but listed as a second layer branchingfrom a particular first layer feed item.

A “feed tracked update,” also referred to herein as a “feed update,” isone type of information update and generally refers to data representingan event. A feed tracked update can include text generated by thedatabase system in response to the event, to be provided as one or morefeed items for possible inclusion in one or more feeds. In oneimplementation, the data can initially be stored, and then the databasesystem can later use the data to create text for describing the event.Both the data and/or the text can be a feed tracked update, as usedherein. In various implementations, an event can be an update of arecord and/or can be triggered by a specific action by a user. Whichactions trigger an event can be configurable. Which events have feedtracked updates created and which feed updates are sent to which userscan also be configurable. Social media messages and other types of feedupdates can be stored as a field or child object of the record. Forexample, the feed can be stored as a child object of the record.

A “group” is generally a collection of users. In some implementations,the group may be defined as users with a same or similar attribute, orby membership. In some implementations, a “group feed”, also referred toherein as a “group news feed”, includes one or more feed items about anyuser in the group. In some implementations, the group feed also includesinformation updates and other feed items that are about the group as awhole, the group's purpose, the group's description, and group recordsand other objects stored in association with the group. Threads ofinformation updates including group record updates and social mediamessages, such as posts, comments, likes, etc., can define groupconversations and change over time.

An “entity feed” or “record feed” generally refers to a feed of feeditems about a particular record in the database. Such feed items caninclude feed tracked updates about changes to the record and posts madeby users about the record. An entity feed can be composed of any type offeed item. Such a feed can be displayed on a page such as a web pageassociated with the record, e.g., a home page of the record. As usedherein, a “profile feed” or “user's profile feed” generally refers to afeed of feed items about a particular user. In one example, the feeditems for a profile feed include posts and comments that other usersmake about or send to the particular user, and status updates made bythe particular user. Such a profile feed can be displayed on a pageassociated with the particular user. In another example, feed items in aprofile feed could include posts made by the particular user and feedtracked updates initiated based on actions of the particular user.

Some non-limiting examples of systems, apparatus, and methods aredescribed below for implementing database systems and enterprise levelsocial networking systems in conjunction with the disclosed techniques.Such implementations can provide more efficient use of a databasesystem. For instance, a user of a database system may not easily knowwhen important information in the database has changed, e.g., about aproject or client. Such implementations can provide feed tracked updatesabout such changes and other events, thereby keeping users informed.

FIG. 8A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service exists and can be used in accordancewith some implementations. Environment 10 may include user systems 12,network 14, database system 16, processor system 17, applicationplatform 18, network interface 20, tenant data storage 22, system datastorage 24, program code 26, and process space 28. In otherimplementations, environment 10 may not have all of these componentsand/or may have other components instead of, or in addition to, thoselisted above.

A user system 12 may be implemented as any computing device(s) or otherdata processing apparatus such as a machine or system used by a user toaccess a database system 16. For example, any of user systems 12 can bea handheld and/or portable computing device such as a mobile phone, asmartphone, a laptop computer, or a tablet. Other examples of a usersystem include computing devices such as a work station and/or a networkof computing devices. As illustrated in FIG. 8A (and in more detail inFIG. 8B) user systems 12 might interact via a network 14 with anon-demand database service, which is implemented in the example of FIG.8A as database system 16.

An on-demand database service, implemented using system 16 by way ofexample, is a service that is made available to users who do not need tonecessarily be concerned with building and/or maintaining the databasesystem. Instead, the database system may be available for their use whenthe users need the database system, i.e., on the demand of the users.Some on-demand database services may store information from one or moretenants into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenantdatabase system (MTS). A database image may include one or more databaseobjects. A relational database management system (RDBMS) or theequivalent may execute storage and retrieval of information against thedatabase object(s). Application platform 18 may be a framework thatallows the applications of system 16 to run, such as the hardware and/orsoftware, e.g., the operating system. In some implementations,application platform 18 enables creation, managing and executing one ormore applications developed by the provider of the on-demand databaseservice, users accessing the on-demand database service via user systems12, or third party application developers accessing the on-demanddatabase service via user systems 12.

The users of user systems 12 may differ in their respective capacities,and the capacity of a particular user system 12 might be entirelydetermined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. Forexample, when a salesperson is using a particular user system 12 tointeract with system 16, the user system has the capacities allotted tothat salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that usersystem to interact with system 16, that user system has the capacitiesallotted to that administrator. In systems with a hierarchical rolemodel, users at one permission level may have access to applications,data, and database information accessible by a lower permission leveluser, but may not have access to certain applications, databaseinformation, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level.Thus, different users will have different capabilities with regard toaccessing and modifying application and database information, dependingon a user's security or permission level, also called authorization.

Network 14 is any network or combination of networks of devices thatcommunicate with one another. For example, network 14 can be any one orany combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network),telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, starnetwork, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriateconfiguration. Network 14 can include a TCP/IP (Transfer ControlProtocol and Internet Protocol) network, such as the global internetworkof networks often referred to as the Internet. The Internet will be usedin many of the examples herein. However, it should be understood thatthe networks that the present implementations might use are not solimited.

User systems 12 might communicate with system 16 using TCP/IP and, at ahigher network level, use other common Internet protocols tocommunicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTPis used, user system 12 might include an HTTP client commonly referredto as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP signals to and from anHTTP server at system 16. Such an HTTP server might be implemented asthe sole network interface 20 between system 16 and network 14, butother techniques might be used as well or instead. In someimplementations, the network interface 20 between system 16 and network14 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP requestdistributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requestsevenly over a plurality of servers. At least for users accessing system16, each of the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data;however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.

In one implementation, system 16, shown in FIG. 8A, implements aweb-based CRM system. For example, in one implementation, system 16includes application servers configured to implement and execute CRMsoftware applications as well as provide related data, code, forms, webpages and other information to and from user systems 12 and to store to,and retrieve from, a database system related data, objects, and Webpagecontent. With a multi-tenant system, data for multiple tenants may bestored in the same physical database object in tenant data storage 22,however, tenant data typically is arranged in the storage medium(s) oftenant data storage 22 so that data of one tenant is kept logicallyseparate from that of other tenants so that one tenant does not haveaccess to another tenant's data, unless such data is expressly shared.In certain implementations, system 16 implements applications otherthan, or in addition to, a CRM application. For example, system 16 mayprovide tenant access to multiple hosted (standard and custom)applications, including a CRM application. User (or third partydeveloper) applications, which may or may not include CRM, may besupported by the application platform 18, which manages creation,storage of the applications into one or more database objects andexecuting of the applications in a virtual machine in the process spaceof the system 16.

One arrangement for elements of system 16 is shown in FIGS. 7A and 7B,including a network interface 20, application platform 18, tenant datastorage 22 for tenant data 23, system data storage 24 for system data 25accessible to system 16 and possibly multiple tenants, program code 26for implementing various functions of system 16, and a process space 28for executing MTS system processes and tenant-specific processes, suchas running applications as part of an application hosting service.Additional processes that may execute on system 16 include databaseindexing processes.

Several elements in the system shown in FIG. 8A include conventional,well-known elements that are explained only briefly here. For example,each user system 12 could include a desktop personal computer,workstation, laptop, PDA, cell phone, or any wireless access protocol(WAP) enabled device or any other computing device capable ofinterfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other networkconnection. The term “computing device” is also referred to hereinsimply as a “computer”. User system 12 typically runs an HTTP client,e.g., a browsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser,Netscape's Navigator browser, Opera's browser, or a WAP-enabled browserin the case of a cell phone, PDA or other wireless device, or the like,allowing a user (e.g., subscriber of the multi-tenant database system)of user system 12 to access, process and view information, pages andapplications available to it from system 16 over network 14. Each usersystem 12 also typically includes one or more user input devices, suchas a keyboard, a mouse, trackball, touch pad, touch screen, pen or thelike, for interacting with a GUI provided by the browser on a display(e.g., a monitor screen, LCD display, OLED display, etc.) of thecomputing device in conjunction with pages, forms, applications andother information provided by system 16 or other systems or servers.Thus, “display device” as used herein can refer to a display of acomputer system such as a monitor or touch-screen display, and can referto any computing device having display capabilities such as a desktopcomputer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, a television set-top box, orwearable device such Google Glass® or other human body-mounted displayapparatus. For example, the display device can be used to access dataand applications hosted by system 16, and to perform searches on storeddata, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages thatmay be presented to a user. As discussed above, implementations aresuitable for use with the Internet, although other networks can be usedinstead of or in addition to the Internet, such as an intranet, anextranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network,any LAN or WAN or the like.

According to one implementation, each user system 12 and all of itscomponents are operator configurable using applications, such as abrowser, including computer code run using a central processing unitsuch as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, system 16(and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) andall of its components might be operator configurable usingapplication(s) including computer code to run using processor system 17,which may be implemented to include a central processing unit, which mayinclude an Intel Pentium® processor or the like, and/or multipleprocessor units. Non-transitory computer-readable media can haveinstructions stored thereon/in, that can be executed by or used toprogram a computing device to perform any of the methods of theimplementations described herein. Computer program code 26 implementinginstructions for operating and configuring system 16 to intercommunicateand to process web pages, applications and other data and media contentas described herein is preferably downloadable and stored on a harddisk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, may also bestored in any other volatile or non-volatile memory medium or device asis well known, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any media capable ofstoring program code, such as any type of rotating media includingfloppy disks, optical discs, digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk(CD), microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or opticalcards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any other typeof computer-readable medium or device suitable for storing instructionsand/or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof,may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over atransmission medium, e.g., over the Internet, or from another server, asis well known, or transmitted over any other conventional networkconnection as is well known (e.g., extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using anycommunication medium and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet,etc.) as are well known. It will also be appreciated that computer codefor the disclosed implementations can be realized in any programminglanguage that can be executed on a client system and/or server or serversystem such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any other markup language,Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, any other scripting language, such asVBScript, and many other programming languages as are well known may beused. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).

According to some implementations, each system 16 is configured toprovide web pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user(client) systems 12 to support the access by user systems 12 as tenantsof system 16. As such, system 16 provides security mechanisms to keepeach tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than oneMTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another(e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or theymay be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one ormore servers located in city A and one or more servers located in cityB). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically and/orphysically connected servers distributed locally or across one or moregeographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to referto one type of computing device such as a system including processinghardware and process space(s), an associated storage medium such as amemory device or database, and, in some instances, a databaseapplication (e.g., OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. Itshould also be understood that “server system” and “server” are oftenused interchangeably herein. Similarly, the database objects describedherein can be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, acollection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online oroffline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include adistributed database or storage network and associated processingintelligence.

FIG. 8B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 8A and various possible interconnections between theseelements. That is, FIG. 8B also illustrates environment 10. However, inFIG. 8B elements of system 16 and various interconnections in someimplementations are further illustrated. FIG. 8B shows that user system12 may include processor system 12A, memory system 12B, input system12C, and output system 12D. FIG. 8B shows network 14 and system 16. FIG.8B also shows that system 16 may include tenant data storage 22, tenantdata 23, system data storage 24, system data 25, User Interface (UI) 30,Application Program Interface (API) 32, PL/SOQL 34, save routines 36,application setup mechanism 38, application servers 50 ₁-50 _(N), systemprocess space 52, tenant process spaces 54, tenant management processspace 60, tenant storage space 62, user storage 64, and applicationmetadata 66. In other implementations, environment 10 may not have thesame elements as those listed above and/or may have other elementsinstead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

User system 12, network 14, system 16, tenant data storage 22, andsystem data storage 24 were discussed above in FIG. 8A. Regarding usersystem 12, processor system 12A may be any combination of one or moreprocessors. Memory system 12B may be any combination of one or morememory devices, short term, and/or long term memory. Input system 12Cmay be any combination of input devices, such as one or more keyboards,mice, trackballs, scanners, cameras, and/or interfaces to networks.Output system 12D may be any combination of output devices, such as oneor more monitors, printers, and/or interfaces to networks. As shown byFIG. 8B, system 16 may include a network interface 20 (of FIG. 8A)implemented as a set of application servers 50, an application platform18, tenant data storage 22, and system data storage 24. Also shown issystem process space 52, including individual tenant process spaces 54and a tenant management process space 60. Each application server 50 maybe configured to communicate with tenant data storage 22 and the tenantdata 23 therein, and system data storage 24 and the system data 25therein to serve requests of user systems 12. The tenant data 23 mightbe divided into individual tenant storage spaces 62, which can be eithera physical arrangement and/or a logical arrangement of data. Within eachtenant storage space 62, user storage 64 and application metadata 66might be similarly allocated for each user. For example, a copy of auser's most recently used (MRU) items might be stored to user storage64. Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entire organization that is atenant might be stored to tenant storage space 62. A UI 30 provides auser interface and an API 32 provides an application programmerinterface to system 16 resident processes to users and/or developers atuser systems 12. The tenant data and the system data may be stored invarious databases, such as one or more Oracle® databases.

Application platform 18 includes an application setup mechanism 38 thatsupports application developers' creation and management ofapplications, which may be saved as metadata into tenant data storage 22by save routines 36 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenantprocess spaces 54 managed by tenant management process 60 for example.Invocations to such applications may be coded using PL/SOQL 34 thatprovides a programming language style interface extension to API 32. Adetailed description of some PL/SOQL language implementations isdiscussed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHODAND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA AMULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, issued onJun. 1, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety andfor all purposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by one ormore system processes, which manage retrieving application metadata 66for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata asan application in a virtual machine.

Each application server 50 may be communicably coupled to databasesystems, e.g., having access to system data 25 and tenant data 23, via adifferent network connection. For example, one application server 50 ₁might be coupled via the network 14 (e.g., the Internet), anotherapplication server 50 _(N-1) might be coupled via a direct network link,and another application server 50 _(N) might be coupled by yet adifferent network connection. Transfer Control Protocol and InternetProtocol (TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating betweenapplication servers 50 and the database system. However, it will beapparent to one skilled in the art that other transport protocols may beused to optimize the system depending on the network interconnect used.

In certain implementations, each application server 50 is configured tohandle requests for any user associated with any organization that is atenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove applicationservers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there ispreferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to aspecific application server 50. In one implementation, therefore, aninterface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the applicationservers 50 and the user systems 12 to distribute requests to theapplication servers 50. In one implementation, the load balancer uses aleast connections algorithm to route user requests to the applicationservers 50. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as roundrobin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, incertain implementations, three consecutive requests from the same usercould hit three different application servers 50, and three requestsfrom different users could hit the same application server 50. In thismanner, by way of example, system 16 is multi-tenant, wherein system 16handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data andapplications across disparate users and organizations.

As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs asales force where each salesperson uses system 16 to manage their salesprocess. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data, customerfollow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., allapplicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in tenant datastorage 22). In an example of a MTS arrangement, since all of the dataand the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit,calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system havingnothing more than network access, the user can manage his or her salesefforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example,if a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internetaccess in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates as tothat customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data might be separate from other users' dataregardless of the employers of each user, some data might beorganization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users orall of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, theremight be some data structures managed by system 16 that are allocated atthe tenant level while other data structures might be managed at theuser level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants includingpossible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keepdata, applications, and application use separate. Also, because manytenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their ownsystem, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions thatmay be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data andtenant-specific data, system 16 might also maintain system level datausable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data mightinclude industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharableamong tenants.

In certain implementations, user systems 12 (which may be clientsystems) communicate with application servers 50 to request and updatesystem-level and tenant-level data from system 16 that may involvesending one or more queries to tenant data storage 22 and/or system datastorage 24. System 16 (e.g., an application server 50 in system 16)automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g., one or moreSQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. Systemdata storage 24 may generate query plans to access the requested datafrom the database.

Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, suchas a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefinedcategories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may beused herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and customobjects according to some implementations. It should be understood that“table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each tablegenerally contains one or more data categories logically arranged ascolumns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a tablecontains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields.For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes acustomer with fields for basic contact information such as name,address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe apurchase order, including fields for information such as customer,product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems,standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRMdatabase applications, such standard entities might include tables forcase, account, contact, lead, and opportunity data objects, eachcontaining pre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word“entity” may also be used interchangeably herein with “object” and“table”.

In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to createand store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standardentities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standardobjects, including custom index fields. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No.7,779,039, titled CUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASESYSTEM, by Weissman et al., issued on Aug. 17, 2010, and herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes, teachessystems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizingstandard objects in a multi-tenant database system. In certainimplementations, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored ina single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logicaltables per organization. It is transparent to customers that theirmultiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that theirdata may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.

FIG. 9A shows a system diagram of an example of architectural componentsof an on-demand database service environment 900, in accordance withsome implementations. A client machine located in the cloud 904,generally referring to one or more networks in combination, as describedherein, may communicate with the on-demand database service environmentvia one or more edge routers 908 and 912. A client machine can be any ofthe examples of user systems 12 described above. The edge routers maycommunicate with one or more core switches 920 and 924 via firewall 916.The core switches may communicate with a load balancer 928, which maydistribute server load over different pods, such as the pods 940 and944. The pods 940 and 944, which may each include one or more serversand/or other computing resources, may perform data processing and otheroperations used to provide on-demand services. Communication with thepods may be conducted via pod switches 932 and 936. Components of theon-demand database service environment may communicate with a databasestorage 956 via a database firewall 948 and a database switch 952.

As shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, accessing an on-demand database serviceenvironment may involve communications transmitted among a variety ofdifferent hardware and/or software components. Further, the on-demanddatabase service environment 900 is a simplified representation of anactual on-demand database service environment. For example, while onlyone or two devices of each type are shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, someimplementations of an on-demand database service environment may includeanywhere from one to many devices of each type. Also, the on-demanddatabase service environment need not include each device shown in FIGS.8A and 8B, or may include additional devices not shown in FIGS. 8A and8B.

Moreover, one or more of the devices in the on-demand database serviceenvironment 900 may be implemented on the same physical device or ondifferent hardware. Some devices may be implemented using hardware or acombination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “dataprocessing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used hereinare not limited to a single hardware device, but rather include anyhardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.

The cloud 904 is intended to refer to a data network or combination ofdata networks, often including the Internet. Client machines located inthe cloud 904 may communicate with the on-demand database serviceenvironment to access services provided by the on-demand databaseservice environment. For example, client machines may access theon-demand database service environment to retrieve, store, edit, and/orprocess information.

In some implementations, the edge routers 908 and 912 route packetsbetween the cloud 904 and other components of the on-demand databaseservice environment 900. The edge routers 908 and 912 may employ theBorder Gateway Protocol (BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol ofthe Internet. The edge routers 908 and 912 may maintain a table of IPnetworks or ‘prefixes’, which designate network reachability amongautonomous systems on the Internet.

In one or more implementations, the firewall 916 may protect the innercomponents of the on-demand database service environment 900 fromInternet traffic. The firewall 916 may block, permit, or deny access tothe inner components of the on-demand database service environment 900based upon a set of rules and other criteria. The firewall 916 may actas one or more of a packet filter, an application gateway, a statefulfilter, a proxy server, or any other type of firewall.

In some implementations, the core switches 920 and 924 are high-capacityswitches that transfer packets within the on-demand database serviceenvironment 900. The core switches 920 and 924 may be configured asnetwork bridges that quickly route data between different componentswithin the on-demand database service environment. In someimplementations, the use of two or more core switches 920 and 924 mayprovide redundancy and/or reduced latency.

In some implementations, the pods 940 and 944 may perform the core dataprocessing and service functions provided by the on-demand databaseservice environment. Each pod may include various types of hardwareand/or software computing resources. An example of the pod architectureis discussed in greater detail with reference to FIG. 9B.

In some implementations, communication between the pods 940 and 944 maybe conducted via the pod switches 932 and 936. The pod switches 932 and936 may facilitate communication between the pods 940 and 944 and clientmachines located in the cloud 904, for example via core switches 920 and924. Also, the pod switches 932 and 936 may facilitate communicationbetween the pods 940 and 944 and the database storage 956.

In some implementations, the load balancer 928 may distribute workloadbetween the pods 940 and 944. Balancing the on-demand service requestsbetween the pods may assist in improving the use of resources,increasing throughput, reducing response times, and/or reducingoverhead. The load balancer 928 may include multilayer switches toanalyze and forward traffic.

In some implementations, access to the database storage 956 may beguarded by a database firewall 948. The database firewall 948 may act asa computer application firewall operating at the database applicationlayer of a protocol stack. The database firewall 948 may protect thedatabase storage 956 from application attacks such as structure querylanguage (SQL) injection, database rootkits, and unauthorizedinformation disclosure.

In some implementations, the database firewall 948 may include a hostusing one or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy trafficbefore passing it to a gateway router. The database firewall 948 mayinspect the contents of database traffic and block certain content ordatabase requests. The database firewall 948 may work on the SQLapplication level atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications'connection to the database or SQL management interfaces as well asintercepting and enforcing packets traveling to or from a databasenetwork or application interface.

In some implementations, communication with the database storage 956 maybe conducted via the database switch 952. The multi-tenant databasestorage 956 may include more than one hardware and/or softwarecomponents for handling database queries. Accordingly, the databaseswitch 952 may direct database queries transmitted by other componentsof the on-demand database service environment (e.g., the pods 940 and944) to the correct components within the database storage 956.

In some implementations, the database storage 956 is an on-demanddatabase system shared by many different organizations. The on-demanddatabase service may employ a multi-tenant approach, a virtualizedapproach, or any other type of database approach. On-demand databaseservices are discussed in greater detail with reference to FIGS. 9A and9B.

FIG. 9B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand database service environment,in accordance with some implementations. The pod 944 may be used torender services to a user of the on-demand database service environment900. In some implementations, each pod may include a variety of serversand/or other systems. The pod 944 includes one or more content batchservers 964, content search servers 968, query servers 982, file servers986, access control system (ACS) servers 980, batch servers 984, and appservers 988. Also, the pod 944 includes database instances 990, quickfile systems (QFS) 992, and indexers 994. In one or moreimplementations, some or all communication between the servers in thepod 944 may be transmitted via the switch 936.

The content batch servers 964 may handle requests internal to the pod.These requests may be long-running and/or not tied to a particularcustomer. For example, the content batch servers 964 may handle requestsrelated to log mining, cleanup work, and maintenance tasks.

The content search servers 968 may provide query and indexer functions.For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 968may allow users to search through content stored in the on-demanddatabase service environment.

The file servers 986 may manage requests for information stored in thefile storage 998. The file storage 998 may store information such asdocuments, images, and basic large objects (BLOBs). By managing requestsfor information using the file servers 986, the image footprint on thedatabase may be reduced.

The query servers 982 may be used to retrieve information from one ormore file systems. For example, the query system 982 may receiverequests for information from the app servers 988 and then transmitinformation queries to the NFS 996 located outside the pod.

The pod 944 may share a database instance 990 configured as amulti-tenant environment in which different organizations share accessto the same database. Additionally, services rendered by the pod 944 maycall upon various hardware and/or software resources. In someimplementations, the ACS servers 980 may control access to data,hardware resources, or software resources.

In some implementations, the batch servers 984 may process batch jobs,which are used to run tasks at specified times. Thus, the batch servers984 may transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers988, to trigger the batch jobs.

In some implementations, the QFS 992 may be an open source file systemavailable from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara, Calif. The QFS mayserve as a rapid-access file system for storing and accessinginformation available within the pod 944. The QFS 992 may support somevolume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be groupedtogether into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on aseparate set of disks, which may be useful for streaming applicationswhere long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system maycommunicate with one or more content search servers 968 and/or indexers994 to identify, retrieve, move, and/or update data stored in thenetwork file systems 996 and/or other storage systems.

In some implementations, one or more query servers 982 may communicatewith the NFS 996 to retrieve and/or update information stored outside ofthe pod 944. The NFS 996 may allow servers located in the pod 944 toaccess information to access files over a network in a manner similar tohow local storage is accessed.

In some implementations, queries from the query servers 922 may betransmitted to the NFS 996 via the load balancer 928, which maydistribute resource requests over various resources available in theon-demand database service environment. The NFS 996 may also communicatewith the QFS 992 to update the information stored on the NFS 996 and/orto provide information to the QFS 992 for use by servers located withinthe pod 944.

In some implementations, the pod may include one or more databaseinstances 990. The database instance 990 may transmit information to theQFS 992. When information is transmitted to the QFS, it may be availablefor use by servers within the pod 944 without using an additionaldatabase call.

In some implementations, database information may be transmitted to theindexer 994. Indexer 994 may provide an index of information availablein the database 990 and/or QFS 992. The index information may beprovided to file servers 986 and/or the QFS 992.

In some implementations, one or more application servers or otherservers described above with reference to FIGS. 7A and 7B include ahardware and/or software framework configurable to execute proceduresusing programs, routines, scripts, etc. Thus, in some implementations,one or more of application servers 50 ₁-50 _(N) of FIG. 8B can beconfigured to initiate performance of one or more of the operationsdescribed above by instructing another computing device to perform anoperation. In some implementations, one or more application servers 50₁-50 _(N) carry out, either partially or entirely, one or more of thedisclosed operations. In some implementations, app servers 988 of FIG.9B support the construction of applications provided by the on-demanddatabase service environment 900 via the pod 944. Thus, an app server988 may include a hardware and/or software framework configurable toexecute procedures to partially or entirely carry out or instructanother computing device to carry out one or more operations disclosedherein. In alternative implementations, two or more app servers 988 maycooperate to perform or cause performance of such operations. Any of thedatabases and other storage facilities described above with reference toFIGS. 7A, 7B, 8A and 8B can be configured to store lists, articles,documents, records, files, and other objects for implementing theoperations described above. For instance, lists of availablecommunication channels associated with share actions for sharing a typeof data item can be maintained in tenant data storage 22 and/or systemdata storage 24 of FIGS. 7A and 7B. By the same token, lists of defaultor designated channels for particular share actions can be maintained instorage 22 and/or storage 24. In some other implementations, rather thanstoring one or more lists, articles, documents, records, and/or files,the databases and other storage facilities described above can storepointers to the lists, articles, documents, records, and/or files, whichmay instead be stored in other repositories external to the systems andenvironments described above with reference to FIGS. 7A, 7B, 8A and 8B.

While some of the disclosed implementations may be described withreference to a system having an application server providing a front endfor an on-demand database service capable of supporting multipletenants, the disclosed implementations are not limited to multi-tenantdatabases nor deployment on application servers. Some implementationsmay be practiced using various database architectures such as ORACLE®,DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scope of theimplementations claimed.

It should be understood that some of the disclosed implementations canbe embodied in the form of control logic using hardware and/or computersoftware in a modular or integrated manner. Other ways and/or methodsare possible using hardware and a combination of hardware and software.

Any of the disclosed implementations may be embodied in various types ofhardware, software, firmware, and combinations thereof. For example,some techniques disclosed herein may be implemented, at least in part,by computer-readable media that include program instructions, stateinformation, etc., for performing various services and operationsdescribed herein. Examples of program instructions include both machinecode, such as produced by a compiler, and files containing higher-levelcode that may be executed by a computing device such as a server orother data processing apparatus using an interpreter. Examples ofcomputer-readable media include, but are not limited to: magnetic mediasuch as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media suchas flash memory, compact disk (CD) or digital versatile disk (DVD);magneto-optical media; and hardware devices specially configured tostore program instructions, such as read-only memory (ROM) devices andrandom access memory (RAM) devices. A computer-readable medium may beany combination of such storage devices.

Any of the operations and techniques described in this application maybe implemented as software code to be executed by a processor using anysuitable computer language such as, for example, Java, C++ or Perlusing, for example, object-oriented techniques. The software code may bestored as a series of instructions or commands on a computer-readablemedium. Computer-readable media encoded with the software/program codemay be packaged with a compatible device or provided separately fromother devices (e.g., via Internet download). Any such computer-readablemedium may reside on or within a single computing device or an entirecomputer system, and may be among other computer-readable media within asystem or network. A computer system or computing device may include amonitor, printer, or other suitable display for providing any of theresults mentioned herein to a user.

While various implementations have been described herein, it should beunderstood that they have been presented by way of example only, and notlimitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present applicationshould not be limited by any of the implementations described herein,but should be defined only in accordance with the following andlater-submitted claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system comprising: a database systemimplemented using a server system, the database system comprising atleast one database, the database system configurable to cause:processing a user request to generate a learning assessment environment;responsive to processing the user request, automatically generating aparticular learning assessment environment such that the particularlearning assessment environment is associated with a correspondingUniform Resource Locator (URL), credentials of a user in associationwith the particular learning assessment environment, and a correspondingdatabase; updating a set of learning assessment environments accessiblevia a user account associated with the user to include the particularlearning assessment environment, each of the learning assessmentenvironments being associated with a corresponding URL, credentials ofthe user in association with the learning assessment environment, and acorresponding database; providing, for presentation in a user interfaceon a display of a user device, a menu indicating the set of learningassessment environments; processing first user input submitted at theuser device, the first user input selecting one of the learningassessment environments; retrieving, from the database of the databasesystem, the credentials of the user associated with the selected one ofthe learning assessment environments; launching the selected one of thelearning assessment environments using the corresponding URL andcredentials of the user, the credentials including a password or refreshtoken; providing, within a context of the selected one of the learningassessment environments, a learning assessment task via the URLcorresponding to the selected learning assessment environment fordisplay at the user device; processing second user input submitted atthe user device in relation to the learning assessment task; in responseto processing the second user input, updating the database correspondingto the selected one of the learning assessment environments based, atleast in part, on the second user input; determining whether the seconduser input satisfies the learning assessment task by verifying that dataand metadata stored in the database corresponding to the selected one ofthe learning assessment environments has been updated correctly for thelearning assessment task; providing, for presentation on the display ofthe user device, an indication of whether the second user inputsatisfies the learning assessment task; and tracking an accuracy withwhich a plurality of learning assessment tasks including the learningassessment task are completed by the user within a context of theselected one of the learning assessment environments based, at least inpart, on whether the second user input satisfies the learning assessmenttask.
 2. The system as recited in claim 1, the database system furtherconfigurable to cause: processing third user input submitted at the userdevice, the third user input selecting a second one of the learningassessment environments; retrieving, from the database of the databasesystem, the credentials associated the selected second learningassessment environment; and launching the selected second learningassessment environment using the corresponding URL and credentials ofthe user in association with the selected second learning assessmentenvironment.
 3. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein thecredentials of the user in association with the learning assessmentenvironment comprise at least one of: a username, password, or refreshtoken.
 4. The system as recited in claim 1, the database system furtherconfigurable to cause: generating the credentials of the user for theparticular learning assessment environment, the credentials of the userincluding a username and password.
 5. The system as recited in claim 1,wherein the user request does not include the credentials of the userfor the particular learning assessment environment.
 6. The system asrecited in claim 4, the database system further configurable to cause:replicating, in the database corresponding to the particular one of thelearning assessment environments, objects stored in an organizationaldatabase associated with an organization.
 7. The system as recited inclaim 1, the database system further configurable to cause: processingcredentials of the user received in association with a particularlearning assessment environment, the particular learning assessmentenvironment being associated with a corresponding URL and acorresponding database; storing the credentials of the user received inassociation with the particular learning assessment environment; andupdating the set of learning assessment environments to include theparticular learning assessment environment.
 8. A computer programproduct comprising computer-readable program code capable of beingexecuted by one or more processors when retrieved from a non-transitorycomputer-readable medium, the program code comprising instructionsconfigurable to cause: processing a user request to generate a learningassessment environment; responsive to processing the user request,automatically generating a particular learning assessment environmentsuch that the particular learning assessment environment is associatedwith a corresponding Uniform Resource Locator (URL), credentials of auser in association with the particular learning assessment environment,and a corresponding database; updating a set of learning assessmentenvironments accessible via a user account associated with the user toinclude the particular learning assessment environment, each of thelearning assessment environments being associated with a correspondingURL, credentials of the user in association with the learning assessmentenvironment, and a corresponding database; providing, for presentationin a user interface on a display of a user device, a menu indicating theset of learning assessment environments; processing first user inputsubmitted at the user device, the first user input selecting one of thelearning assessment environments; retrieving, from the database of thedatabase system, the credentials of the user associated with theselected one of the learning assessment environments; launching theselected one of the learning assessment environments using thecorresponding URL and credentials of the user, the credentials includinga password or refresh token; providing, within a context of the selectedone of the learning assessment environments, a learning assessment taskvia the URL corresponding to the selected learning assessmentenvironment for display at the user device; processing second user inputsubmitted at the user device in relation to the learning assessmenttask; in response to processing the second user input, updating thedatabase corresponding to the selected one of the learning assessmentenvironments based, at least in part, on the second user input;determining whether the second user input satisfies the learningassessment task by verifying that data and metadata stored in thedatabase corresponding to the selected one of the learning assessmentenvironments has been updated correctly for the learning assessmenttask; providing, for presentation on the display of the user device, anindication of whether the second user input satisfies the learningassessment task; and tracking an accuracy with which a plurality oflearning assessment tasks including the learning assessment task arecompleted by the user within a context of the selected one of thelearning assessment environments based, at least in part, on whether thesecond user input satisfies the learning assessment task.
 9. Thecomputer program product as recited in claim 8, the program codecomprising instructions further configured to cause: processing thirduser input submitted at the user device, the third user input selectinga second one of the learning assessment environments; retrieving, fromthe database of the database system, the credentials associated theselected second learning assessment environment; and launching theselected second learning assessment environment using the correspondingURL and credentials of the user in association with the selected secondlearning assessment environment.
 10. The computer program product asrecited in claim 8, wherein the credentials of the user in associationwith the learning assessment environment comprise at least one of: ausername, password, or refresh token.
 11. The computer program productas recited in claim 8, the program code comprising instructions furtherconfigured to cause: generating the credentials of the user for theparticular learning assessment environment, the login credentials of theuser including a username and password.
 12. The computer program productas recited in claim 8, wherein the user request does not include thecredentials of the user for the particular learning assessmentenvironment.
 13. The computer program product as recited in claim 11,the program code comprising instructions further configured to cause:replicating, in the database corresponding to the particular one of thelearning assessment environments, objects stored in an organizationaldatabase associated with an organization.
 14. The computer programproduct as recited in claim 8, the program code comprising instructionsfurther configured to cause: processing credentials of the user receivedin association with a particular learning assessment environment, theparticular learning assessment environment being associated with acorresponding URL and a corresponding database; storing the credentialsof the user received in association with the particular learningassessment environment; and updating the set of learning assessmentenvironments to include the particular learning assessment environment.15. A method, comprising: processing a user request to generate alearning assessment environment; responsive to processing the userrequest, automatically generating a particular learning assessmentenvironment such that the particular learning assessment environment isassociated with a corresponding Uniform Resource Locator (URL),credentials of a user in association with the particular learningassessment environment, and a corresponding database; updating a set oflearning assessment environments accessible via a user accountassociated with the user to include the particular learning assessmentenvironment, each of the learning assessment environments beingassociated with a corresponding URL, credentials of the user inassociation with the learning assessment environment, and acorresponding database; providing, for presentation in a user interfaceon a display of a user device, a menu indicating the set of learningassessment environments; processing first user input submitted at theuser device, the first user input selecting one of the learningassessment environments; retrieving, from the database of the databasesystem, the credentials of the user associated with the selected one ofthe learning assessment environments; launching the selected one of thelearning assessment environments using the corresponding URL andcredentials of the user, the credentials including a password or refreshtoken; providing, within a context of the selected one of the learningassessment environments, a learning assessment task via the URLcorresponding to the selected learning assessment environment fordisplay at the user device; processing second user input submitted atthe user device in relation to the learning assessment task; in responseto processing the second user input, updating the database correspondingto the selected one of the learning assessment environments based, atleast in part, on the second user input; determining whether the seconduser input satisfies the learning assessment task by verifying that dataand metadata stored in the database corresponding to the selected one ofthe learning assessment environments has been updated correctly for thelearning assessment task; providing, for presentation on the display ofthe user device, an indication of whether the second user inputsatisfies the learning assessment task; and tracking an accuracy withwhich a plurality of learning assessment tasks including the learningassessment task are completed by the user within a context of theselected one of the learning assessment environments based, at least inpart, on whether the second user input satisfies the learning assessmenttask.
 16. The method as recited in claim 15, further comprising:processing third user input submitted at the user device, the third userinput selecting a second one of the learning assessment environments;retrieving, from the database of the database system, the credentialsassociated the selected second learning assessment environment; andlaunching the selected second learning assessment environment using thecorresponding URL and credentials of the user in association with theselected second learning assessment environment.
 17. The method asrecited in claim 15, wherein the credentials of the user in associationwith the learning assessment environment comprise at least one of: ausername, password, or refresh token.
 18. The method as recited in claim15, further comprising: generating the credentials of the user for theparticular learning assessment environment, the credentials of the userincluding a username and password.
 19. The method as recited in claim18, further comprising: wherein the user request does not include thecredentials of the user for the particular learning assessmentenvironment.
 20. The method as recited in claim 15, further comprising:processing credentials of the user received in association with aparticular learning assessment environment, the particular learningassessment environment being associated with a corresponding URL and acorresponding database; and storing the credentials of the user receivedin association with the particular learning assessment environment.